Thieaudio Monarch Mk2 [Pre-order]

They might be on the pricier side but the quality is soooo good. I will not use a other pair for long time.

Considering how fast the world of IEMs has been moving lately and how much innovation (some good, some bad, some weird) is going on right now, it's wild that an IEM that's as old as the Monarch Mk2 is can still sound so incredibly good, and so worth the price to me.

I bought the Monarch Mk2 blind, based purely on its reputation in the community, and I was not disappointed. They just sound... perfect. The tuning is as close to my own personal ideal as any IEM I've ever encountered. The worst thing you can say about the Monarch Mk2 is that there isn't anything particularly "remarkable" about any one particular aspect of how they're tuned. Like, it just nails it all, from bass to treble. It's a "warm-neutral" tuning that just works so well.

Imaging is fantastic - clear separation between every individual voice, filling the space without muddying anything. Soundstage isn't something I really like to discuss with IEMs because I think it's extremely subjective and dependent on the song, but I will say that the Monarchs achieve a more fully realized "center" than maybe any other IEM I've tried. The Monarchs succeed better than anything else in TRULY placing sound in the middle of my head, whereas most IEMs, even other pretty pricy ones, never quite manage to make left and right come together in the center in a 100% believable fashion. That's probably what impresses me about the Monarch Mk2 the most.

Are they worth $1000? Well, to me, yes. Diminishing returns kick in hard with IEMs above $200-400, but even so, the Monarch Mk2s just sound so close to "perfect" to me personally that I don't regret dropping that much money on them. They're pretty much "endgame" territory for me. I can't imagine any possible way I'd spend OVER $1000 on IEMs, particularly after hearing how good these sound - I just can't believe sound quality could really get any better than what the Monarch Mk2 already has on offer, at least not enough to be worth MORE than $1000. So, yeah, endgame.

So I guess all this to say: I wholeheartedly recommend the Monarch Mk2s to anyone who really wants to get the best sound out of an IEM they can, who's willing to spend $1000 to do so, and who considers $1000 a reasonable upper boundary and stopping point to cap their ambitions/insanity at. They're just fantastic.

Nice